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Fracking foes seek ban built into restructuring of Boulder County's government

By John Fryar, Times-Call staff writer

Posted:
05/06/2014 10:47:08 AM MDT

Updated:
05/06/2014 02:56:18 PM MDT

Merrily Mazza, a Lafaytte City Council member, voices her opposition to fracking during a Boulder County commissioners' meeting Tuesday. The Boulder County Community Rights Network has asked the commissioners to pursue restructuring the county government under a home-rule charter. (Mark Leffingwell / Daily Camera)

Anti-fracking activists would like that process — currently used to free up underground oil and gas deposits — to be prohibited by a proposed home-rule charter that would restructure Boulder County's government.

The newly formed Boulder County Community Rights Network asked the Boulder County commissioners on Tuesday to schedule a special July 15 election to seek voters' authorization to form a home-rule charter commission — a panel that might incorporate a fracking ban into the overall county charter it would forward to county voters in a separate future election.

The group has given the commissioners a week — until May 13 — to say whether they'll hold a July election on the issue of creating the charter commission.

Thomas Groover, one of the people presenting the proposal, told Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Elise Jones and Deb Gardner that he and the others advocating the home-rule charter will wait until then to see whether "you are willing to work with the people to change the form of government to one that vests the power of the community in the people who call it home."

If the group hasn't heard from the commissioners before noon May 13, "we will understand that you have declined this invitation to work with the people of this community to ensure we have a voice," said Groover, a Superior resident with a chiropractic practice in Boulder.

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Groover said after Tuesday's meeting that if the commissioners refuse to hold such a special election, backers of the home-rule idea will probably launch a petition drive to try to get enough registered voters' signatures to force the election to be held.

However, the commissioners told the more than 20 people who'd gathered for Tuesday morning's meeting — the county board's monthly opportunity for members of the public to comment on almost any county government issue — that a July special election is unlikely because of the legal requirements and practical considerations involved.

Gardner said holding such an election so soon wouldn't allow for a broad community conversation about the idea of drafting a home-rule charter for Boulder County government.

Boulder County's current temporary moratorium on accepting and processing new oil and gas drilling permits — whether or not the fracking process is used as part of those drilling operations — is set to expire Jan. 1, but the commissioners could extend it beyond that point.

Backers of the home-rule charter concept argued it would give county government and the commissioners and their constituents more powers than permitted in so-called statutory counties whose actions are limited to what's explicitly spelled out in state law.

Being a statutory county is one thing standing in the way of Boulder County enacting a fracking ban for unincorporated parts of the county, those fracking foes argue.

A website created by the group, willboulderbefracked.com, suggests that a Boulder County home-rule charter could contain "community rights" language that would give the county "authority to define and advance our rights and protect the health, safety and welfare of human and natural communities in Boulder County.

"The Commissioners will then be accountable to the people of Boulder County rather than to the state and corporate interests," the website says.

Shadi Ramey, a Longmont-area resident who said she's the mother of three, complained that the oil and gas industry is now exempt from laws that protect the environment, something she said "is unacceptable for the health of our children in Boulder County."

Ramey told the commissioners that they're failing their stewardship responsibilities when they allow corporations to pollute the county's air and water.

The willboulderbefreacked.com website says that under its current status as a statutory county, "our County Commissioners answer to the State, not to us. Therefore, as citizens of Boulder County we are powerless to protect ourselves, our families and our communities from unwanted and harmful industrial projects."

Lafayette City Councilwoman Merrily Mazza, who said she was there on her own behalf and that of the Community Rights Network and not the Lafayette council, told the commissioners that as it stands now, "a corporate few have greater constitutional rights than communities."

Mary Smith, a resident of Wagon Wheel Gap Road, told commissioners that the home-rule charter advocates know "that each of you cares deeply for this community and for those of us who call it home"

But as commissioners of a statutory county, "you must work within the box of existing state law and answer to state interests," Smith said — something she said could be remedied by "the creation and adoption of a community rights-based home-rule charter."

Most of Colorado's 64 counties are statutory counties. Denver and Broomfield are both cities and counties, and Weld and Pitkin counties operate under voter-approved home-rule charters.

Commissioner Jones said she and her board colleagues "share a lot of the concerns" expressed by people at Tuesday's hearing, but she said she had to give them "a reality check."

Jones said her own research indicates that becoming a home-rule county operating under a charter wouldn't necessarily give Boulder County many more powers on issues like oil and gas drilling.

She said she's learned in her first nearly year and a half as county commissioner "how little authority counties actually have in the grand scheme of things," whether they're statutory or home rule.

Domenico said the possibilities of moving to a home-rule charter "has been on my mind for a number of years," but she told the people at Tuesday's meeting that it wouldn't open the doors to further regulation of oil and gas operations as much as those people, and the commissioners themselves, might wish.

The commissioners said they'll be discussing the home-rule charter idea with County Attorney Ben Pearlman, along with the options it might give the county for better local government control over local issues — although Jones said from what she's heard, the various elections involved could result in a three-year process before such a charter could ever take effect.

Groover said after Tuesday's meeting that the Boulder Community Rights Network has just been launched.

"We're all volunteers," he said. "We just feel in our hearts that something has to be done" about the possibility of fracking resuming in Boulder County.

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